This morning on a break between classes I drove out to a nearby bookstore to see if I could find a novel that I've been hunting for. On the way there, as I was moving with the flow of the cars all around me, I noticed something on the side of the road. Not in the median among the grasses and wildflowers, but right there on the asphault, in that tiny space between the white lines and the edge.
A tiny red rocking chair.
Bigger than a dolls chair, it seemed to made for a small child or a toddler. If I had been looking the other way, or checking my rearview mirror for traffic I probably would have missed it. But instead I found myself kinda staring in wonder at this bizzare sight. Right there on Southside boulevard, rocking a little bit in the wake of the cars rushing by was this little fire-engine red rocking chair made out of wood.
It was just sitting there
completely out of place
Almost instantly my mind started snapping to possible explanations; how it could have fallen out of the bed of an open pickup truck that was moving items to a new home or apartment, or just slipped off the roof of a family car returning home from a Christmas shopping trip, but even with those ideas, just the image of it seemed to stick in my head.
Roadways (especially Jacksonville roadways) don't seem to be meant for bright red things. Even the faded green-white of the sun-drenched grasses behind it seemed dull by comparison. And I found it kind of strange that thoughts like this had never entered my head before. Or that they were even in my mind at all.
All it would take was an oversized SUV or some careless driver listening to a cell phone to reduce it to splinters.
But there it sat.
Too small for anyone to sit in. Too little for anyone to turn back for.
A tiny red rocking chair.
Bigger than a dolls chair, it seemed to made for a small child or a toddler. If I had been looking the other way, or checking my rearview mirror for traffic I probably would have missed it. But instead I found myself kinda staring in wonder at this bizzare sight. Right there on Southside boulevard, rocking a little bit in the wake of the cars rushing by was this little fire-engine red rocking chair made out of wood.
It was just sitting there
completely out of place
Almost instantly my mind started snapping to possible explanations; how it could have fallen out of the bed of an open pickup truck that was moving items to a new home or apartment, or just slipped off the roof of a family car returning home from a Christmas shopping trip, but even with those ideas, just the image of it seemed to stick in my head.
Roadways (especially Jacksonville roadways) don't seem to be meant for bright red things. Even the faded green-white of the sun-drenched grasses behind it seemed dull by comparison. And I found it kind of strange that thoughts like this had never entered my head before. Or that they were even in my mind at all.
All it would take was an oversized SUV or some careless driver listening to a cell phone to reduce it to splinters.
But there it sat.
Too small for anyone to sit in. Too little for anyone to turn back for.
Just
a tiny
red
rocking chair
sitting by the road
[Listening to: Groove Collective, "Rentstrike"]
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